Delirious
by Dukes126plus
Summary: “You know,” Bo answers, deadly serious. “Big ears, kind of gold, teleports. Alien!” Two separate vignettes from Strange Visitor to Hazzard.
1. Delirious

_Strange Visitor to Hazzard_: what an awful episode. I don't think I ever managed to sit through it before doing this little exercise. In fact, the first time through, I didn't make it. I wrote this drabble instead, even as I was supposed to be watching. A couple of months later, I did a second pass and managed to make it through. It's no better than I thought it would be, but I did manage to get chapter two, a totally separate vignette, out of it. And that part was fun.

* * *

"Little Cousin," Bo mutters, as if he's not the youngest of the brood.

Luke studies his color; still flushed. "What?" he asks.

"You know," Bo answers, deadly serious. "Big ears, kind of gold, teleports. Alien!" Like Luke's the delirious one.

He pushes back sweat-soaked blond bangs, mopping Bo's face with a cool cloth.

"Did Boss get him?"

How could Boss harm a figment of Bo's imagination?

"He's fine," Luke soothes. "Try to sleep." He shouldn't have let Bo kiss him last week, when his throat tickled. Luke's flu was mild; his cousin's fever is high. He's not leaving Bo's side.


	2. Swamp Gas

"Say it," has been a weeklong goad. Just something to nudge at Luke with, looking for any response beyond sour grumblings. Hasn't worked yet, but that's no reason to quit. "You want me."

Every week, Luke gets a little less pleasant to stand next to. Snide faces pointing out the stupidity of their hometown are interspersed with nasty snickers about the bumblings of the law. Used to be that for all his low expectations of the world, Luke was at least fun, causing more trouble than he fixed. Now he's nothing more than a boy scout with a bad attitude.

Bo's taken to needling him; it might have started with a simple plan to bring out the old bantering one-upmanship of their younger years. The kind of thing that starts with jokes and ends in dares, skinned knees, and a wild laugh. It hasn't worked, more like degenerated into a meaner game of trying to get any kind of rise at all out of Luke. Most of the time it fails, but this past week's worked well enough to keep them arguing.

"I want you," Luke answers back in a sneer. "To shut up."

Testy, testy. Dukes don't say shut up anymore, not since they stopped running 'shine, stopped cussing, stopped having fun, stopped being young, maybe.

Could be that Luke's tired of the same, pointless conversation, but it's about the only one he'll engage in anymore. Ever since they woke up in the same bed, too close and no good excuse for it, Rosco and Boss staring at them through jail-cell bars, Luke's been close to silent. Except when he's denying wanting Bo. Which is why Bo says, "You think I'm pretty, don't you? Admit it."

"Admit it," Luke mocks, pitch of his voice a little high and very nasal. "You want me, you can't stop thinking about me, you enjoyed it." Bo doesn't talk like that; sure he's said those words, but not in that same girly voice Luke just used. "Tell you what," gets added without the childish whine. "I'll admit whatever you want."

Huh, well Bo's not thrilled with that notion. The idea is to pick at Luke until he responds, not get him to agree. Agreement means the end of the game.

"When," Luke adds with that tight little grin that's not in the least amused, "aliens land in Hazzard."

It's tried and true, as these things go. Turns the game around without ever changing the players. Now Bo's making the reasonable (and yet still smirk-worthy) point that if those are the conditions, Luke'll never have to admit that he's wrong (or Bo's pretty).

His cousin could have done better than coming up with the alien-landing condition. It's not even all that creative, what with the swamp gas going to the town's brain, resulting in a new U.F.O. sighting every day. It's just the smart one's attempt at shutting him down, and it's not going to work.

Daisy's between them a lot lately; Bo's not sure who's responsible for this new development. Could be the girl herself, who actually halfway believes in flying saucers (not to mention ghosts and the occult and lions and tigers and bears, oh my) and likes to cling close to Luke when there's something out there that could be threatening. Might've been Luke, looking for someone to protect against the dangers of the world now that Bo's all grown up. Might even be Bo that started this thing of sitting Daisy between them, straddling the console. He has some memory of having invited her. Once or twice. Which has turned into a whole year, seems like, of Daisy in the middle. (Except last week when there was no one between them at all on the jail cot, just Luke radiating heat at him right through the thin threads of their shirts.)

Daisy's between them when Clyde Berrey stops skirting around the edge of crazy and falls right in. One too many nights of sharing poor-grade 'shine with the gators, Bo suspects. Funny as hell the way the man's rambling about lights and how it landed in front of him, clear as day. Clyde's brain hasn't been clear as day since Jesse was skinny and Rosco was playing with cap guns.

Daisy teeters on the edge of belief, Bo laughs and plays along with old Clyde, and Luke acts all responsible and mature. _Go on home and have some coffee, get some rest_ is his kindly advice. Practically scratches at the beard he doesn't have while dispensing his old-man wisdom. When he starts to get fat (Bo doesn't even want to picture that – Luke's always been muscle and bone, nothing soft except – just maybe – where he sits. Bo's always wondered about that, considers it a morbid curiosity, because trying to find out for sure will definitely mean his death) it'll be a complete transformation; Luke'll be Jesse.

Daisy's with them, occupying some portion of the larger space that's between him and Luke, when Enos takes the plunge off of sanity's cliffs. Squeaking squeal of a voice, rambling about a spaceship landing in Skunk Hollow. Daisy's ready to follow her deputy non-boyfriend off into the gorge of insanity, but him and Luke, they know better. Mostly.

Luke's starting to give him funny looks. Not quite his usual _Hazzard's full of idiots_, or _can you believe this crap_. Not even that other old standard and crowd favorite, _shut up Bo_. More of a curious stare than anything. Like he wants to know whether these alien sightings could be real, or maybe Luke's just being his suspicious self, wondering who's behind it all. The thought makes Bo wish he'd thought of it, getting all of Hazzard to agree that there are aliens out there, just to see if Luke will stick to his word about admitting to things.

Daisy's smack dab between them, digging her nails right on through Bo's jeans and finding skin underneath, when they make a side trip to Skunk Hollow to look for evidence that Enos isn't as dumb as he acts. Turns out he gets those half-moon bruises on his thigh for no good cause, what with the way there's no sign of anything amiss here. The promise of pie is the only salvation for another wasted day, even if he does have to work for it, picking crabapples. Seems unwise, when he thinks about it, to pick up food from Skunk Hollow, which is so named for its eau de swamp gas. No reason to think that stagnant water gets any sweeter just because it's been filtered up through a tree trunk, down a branch, and into an apple. Which makes it no loss when they wind up having to dump their freshly picked goods in a hurry in the face of Boss Hogg's threats.

"County property," Luke mutters the whole way home. Cheery guy, holding a grudge against Boss and Rosco for their idiocy. As if it's the first time they've come out with something as stupid as declaring a little piece of nowhere county property on a momentary whim. This here is why Bo has taken to goading Luke in the first place. But he can't do it now, not with Daisy in between them.

Daisy's on her own, not far, but actually managing not to be right in the middle of the Duke men, when she discovers the thing in the car.

"There's something in the car!" she says in that same effort to sound mysterious that always fails. Turns out she's right though. There's something in the car. Luke sees it, too, which is what makes Bo bend over. Not far, just enough to get a glance into the General's back seat, which even Jesse seems fascinated by.

Looks suspiciously like a child to him. Kid in costume. Begging for candy.

Luke clearly has his own suspicions, and this time there's no mistaking they're focused on Bo. _Bet you think you're cute_, is what those squinted down eyes and smushed up lips are saying to him now. He just shrugs a _don't look at me_ back to his know-it-all cousin. Bo sure as heck didn't stop on the side of any road to pick up any-damn-thing that looks like that.

The thing makes farting noises. That figures, if it's made of swamp gas, farting would come naturally. Except there's no stink, no Daisy chastising and swiping at the air in front of her nose, and also no sneaky little brat. Funny how the kid disappears from the car, but little creatures are like that. Bees sting, snakes bite and children… well, disappearing is one of the better things that they do, honestly.

They find this one standing on their roof, and it's right about there that it becomes obvious that even if they didn't get around to eating those apples, they were soaked in some serious moonshine, the kind that can get a man drunk just from standing near it. Hazzard rumor has it that Luke's daddy made that kind.

What the hell, he's been drunk enough to talk to figments before. So he joins the rest of his intoxicated family in a shared delusion, trying to communicate with the varmint. Gets shushed by Luke, who's telling him that he's scaring it. Aw, poor little alien-thing. Clearly needs to go home now.

More farting noises, and the thing shows up on their porch. Luke's squatting in front of it, talking all gentle-like. It's a tone of voice that's always been saved for Bo, at least he thinks it has. He knows he's never heard Luke use it with anyone else, and he rarely gets talked to that way himself. It's just the right timbre to banish nightmares and soothe scrapes, a sound neither Jesse nor Lavinia ever came close to. And Luke's got himself a pet to use it on, a child, an alien – whatever it is, it's got to go now.

After it gets shown to Enos, then saved from Rosco and Boss. Gets dubbed 'Little Cousin' and nearly kicked back to whatever planet it thinks it's from, because once upon a shared childhood, that was a semi-affectionate insult that Luke used on Bo. Brings out a side of Luke that none of them has seen in years; gentleness aside, the man's not hating everything in sight for once. Hours of Bo's life have been dedicated to the attempt to find this part of his cousin, and the thing from outer space succeeds at it in seconds. Only good thing about the whole mess is how its runty frame gets Luke to stoop in all kinds of different ways. Bo's keeps a step back in those moments, assessing. Yeah, that part of Luke has got to be softer than the rest.

Seems like the Halloween kid of an alien agrees about how it's time to get a move on. Wiggles like a dog in urgent need of a tree, gestures like Rosco in full twitch. Gets its point across that it wants out of Hazzard, and that's got to be the best idea it's had since landing here in the first place.

So they head to Skunk Hollow, get detoured into town, lose the damned thing, find it again, rescue it a few times and bust some randomly appearing bad guys along the way. Almost normal, except there's still the brat bouncing around in a feverish attempt to draw every ounce of Luke's attention. Got to go.

It's dark by the time they hit the Hollow. Or the sun's gone, anyway. It gets bright right quick when the headlights of the most souped up vehicle Bo's ever laid eyes on grazes the ground and swallows up the Halloween kid. No two ways about it, an alien has landed in Hazzard.

And when the thing's gone again, and it's just him and Luke in the dark of the swamp, Bo finally gets around to agreeing, that's what it was.

"I can't hardly believe that really happened. It did happen, didn't it?"

"I think so." Luke answers. Contradictory as always, he's shaking his head. "I hope so," is the follow up.

After that, things move fast. Bo's backside's pinned up against the General's cooling metal skin, his front side up against Luke. Kissing, there's wild kissing with open mouths, and rocking. Hands everywhere, his hair, shoulders, chest, sliding under his arms and up his shoulder blades to get a good, firm grip around the back. Leaves the low ground for Bo's hands, which find the answers to questions he's been trying not to ask. Firm, yes, but not as hard as the rest of Luke. Just about perfect really, fitting neatly into his palms, and making him wonder how it has come to pass that he's never held onto this part of Luke before.

Moan in his mouth, then the kiss breaks. Has to, they need to breathe. "You're pretty," Luke gasps. "I want you. I can't stop thinking about you; I enjoyed it." A man of his word, gets a pat on his ass for his good behavior. Seems like that gesture's trying to spark a complaint, but there'll be none of that. Bo shuts him up with another kiss.


End file.
